Women Landowners In The Viking Age
By Johanna Wittenberg

For many years, written medieval codes such as the 11th-century Gulating Law were regarded as representative of laws throughout the Viking Age. These edictss limited or prohibited many women’s rights, including their right to inherit odal land—that is, property passed down in the family. Based on these documents, historians have assumed that those same restrictions applied to women in the early Viking Age.
New light has been shed on this question. According to Barbro Dahl of the Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, the Viking Age settlement of Gausel in Southwest Norway “gives an impression of wealthy women as owners of the farmsteads established in previous periods.”
Gausel is an ancient farmstead that has been continuously occupied since pre-Roman times. Lying on the west shore of the Gandsfjord, it was likely the most important steading in the area during the Viking age. At that time, many high-status burials were placed over ancient ruins, including ship graves and boat burials. These graves contain the highest concentration of Irish metal objects in the world. Archeologists believe these burials were part of establishing odal (inheritance) rights to land.
In Gausel, high status female burials of this kind appear to be twice as common as male. The soil here does not preserve bones well, so the graves have been assigned sex based on grave goods rather than DNA or osteological evidence. In other parts of the region, male burials based on grave goods make up 50-90% of the graves. (Dahl)
Dahl conjectures that since female burials in the context of odal land are the rule rather than the exception, it contradicts the assumption that women’s rights of inheritance in Viking Rogaland had the same restrictions as those in later, written medieval law codes which limit or prohibit the rights of women to inherit odal land.
Grave (#1883), known as the Gausel Queen’s, is one of the richest graves in Norway, approaching that of the Oseberg ship burial (also female). This burial is dated to about AD 850-860 and the occupant was buried in a wooden coffin with female grave goods: “the finest gilded bronze brooches known from the period, along with elaborate, massive silver brooches, two silver arm rings, 13 gilded bronze-mounts with ornaments in Irish style, belonging to a harness strapped to a horse’s cranium, three drinking horns with Irish mounts, other gilded bronze-mounts, Irish hanging bowl, glass beads, ring of jet, casket, rivets and knives and different utensils.” (Borsheim)
The grave was positioned along the aisle of a pre-Roman smithy between the outer wall and the forge. This is considered a high ranking placement, referring to the ancestry of the deceased, likely to establish odal rights to the property.
Three boat graves in the area also contain horse’s heads with. Since no bones survived, these burials are designated male since they contained full sets of weapons. The largest of them contained a full set of blacksmith tools in a boat estimated (by rivet placement) at 30 feet long and dated about the same time as the Gausel Queen (AD 850).
Until very recently, Viking Age grave finds have been designated as that of a male or female based on the grave goods—jewelry and weaving implements specify a woman’s burial, whereas weapons and tools indicate a man. This resulted in a belief that that well over half the burials in Viking Age Scandinavia were male. However, this belief is coming into question since the occupants of some major weapons graves, such as BJ581 in Birka, Sweden, have proven to be female based on DNA and osteological evidence.

References:
Gausel utgravingene 1997-2000, Stavanger 2001, by Ragnar Borsheim et al
Relations Between Burials and Buildings In The Iron Age of Southwest Norway, by Barbro Dahl, Museum of Archeology, University of Stavanger
Art by Bev Van Berkom Bev Van Berkom website